


And We Will Sing "I" With the Beating Heart of the World

by magistera



Category: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:42:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21819874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magistera/pseuds/magistera
Summary: UrGoh has berries. SkekGra has doubts.
Relationships: skekGra/urGoh (Dark Crystal)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 51
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	And We Will Sing "I" With the Beating Heart of the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Heather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/gifts).



_"What it was like? Being one with each other?”_

_UrGoh reaches out for his scaly hand, pats it. “It was...not unlike this. Eat another berry.” He gropes around the various pouches he has strung and draped about his long body, comes up with an urdrupe berry, and pops it into his own mouth. It seems to take an hour; maybe it does, as slow as urGoh is._

_SkekGra's head swims, swirls with the colors of the berries he's already consumed. He doesn't want to eat another one. His mind is swollen, expanding; it threatens to become too large for his body. What will happen if it does? Will his mind surge into urGoh's, mixing and melding them back together as they had hoped? Will it just keep swelling? If he moves too quickly, he might pop like one of skekLach's pustules. He might expand without limit, thinning and ballooning out until he encompasses the whole of Thra. Would Thra accept him, then? Would it sing to him? Would_ urGoh _accept him, or would he recoil from the full knowledge of everything skekGra has done? It feels like he might splash his mind out onto the ground in a messy puddle. Or maybe that's just the contents of his stomach. He fumbles after his line of thought like a fizzgig chasing a stick._

_"You are lying. I thought you Mystics could not lie.”_

_UrGoh settles back into the grass, still holding his hand.“You see? We gain each other's properties. If we weren't closer to being rejoined, I couldn't lie to you. Eat another berry.”_

_*_

In another world, they were one. Whole. United. UrGoh claims to remember that other time clearly. SkekGra only touches the edge of it in dreams. More often, though, he dreams of the moments immediately following the Division. It haunts him. The look on the urRu's faces as they fought to defend themselves from his fellow Skeksis. From him.

The look on their faces as they died, as they fled. The humping, dragging way the urRu ran, so nauseatingly _different_ from the movements of either Skeksis or urSkek – and the impulse it woke in him to give chase, to run them down and extract from their bodies some measure of payment for the shock, confusion and pain he felt. The awful, reptilian joy on the other Skeksis' faces as they harried the Mystics out of the castle. The feel of that expression on his own face, his beak open – when did he grow a beak? – cawing triumph.

Sometimes the dream is flipped, and skekGra instead feels the chill of the castle stone under his long, heavy tail, the wind in his mane as he flees, and the choking fear, the _wrongness_ of being chased by beings he knows as intimately as he knows his own skin – or as he _should_ know it, because the skin he has is strange and new, wrinkled and dimmed from what his soul tells him it should be, scraping along the rough floor instead of standing tall.

In the dream, when skekGra is himself, urGoh turns back at the last and reaches out to skekGra with one of his upper hands. SkekGra feels that reaching, an unspeakable sense of loss clogging his throat and blurring his eyesight. His own hand twitches, half-lifts in the desire to reach back.

And then another Skeksis strikes urGoh's hand with his staff, breaking the fragile wrist, and skekGra reels back, keening, because he feels that, too.

“Did you turn back for me?” he asked urGoh once, hundreds of trine later.

“No,” urGoh said. “I only ran.”

*

“ _The berries will bring back the visions,” urGoh says. “They will show us what to do. The kind of Gelfling that live in this desert eat them to be closer to Thra. They call them urdrupe berries.”_

_SkekGra regards the red berry skeptically. “How do you know what works for Gelfling will work for Skeksis?” he asks. “Or for Mystic?”_

_"I don't,” urGoh says. He spreads his upper hands in a slow, but cheerful shrug. “We'll have to take a leap of faith.”_

_"You should take a leap off that cliff,” skekGra grumbles, but he takes the berry from urGoh and puts it in his mouth. He spits it out immediately. “Pah! Bitter!”_

_"It isn't candy, it's medicine,” urGoh says. He eats one himself. “The Mystics make many concoctions that taste worse than this,” he observes, holding out another berry. Shuddering dramatically, skekGra takes it and eats it._

*

When skekGra first arrives at the Circle of the Suns, he is vibrating with tension. He has not seen urGoh since the day, many trine before, when the urRu fled the castle – or perhaps he has seen him, just a few short unum ago, in the Crystal Chamber, where Thra had told them both that the urRu and the Skeksis must reunite or die. SkekGra still doesn't know whether that was a true vision, or madness, but he has come, all the same.

The Breath of Thra whistles all around him as he makes his way to the top of the spire, and in it he can hear the echo of Thra's song, which had rung through the Chamber like a bell all through the vision. The song filled him with a sense of loss and yearning, and the memory of it had driven him across the desert and into the tunnels.

When at last he emerges at the top of the spire, urGoh is the first thing he sees. The Mystic is bent over a pot, examining some plants growing within. For a moment skekGra just stands there, frozen, taking in the sight of him. A sudden fear seizes him: what will urGoh say? Will he turn skekGra away, drive him out as the Skeksis drove out the urRu? Will they be forced to fight, until one of them kills them both?

He forces himself to take a step forward, and urGoh looks up. “Oh, hello,” he says, to skekGra's consternation. Lifting a small cluster of berries up from the potted plants, he bites at the stem to detach them. “Have you ever tried one of these?”

*

_"Lift your hand. No – the other one. There, you see? Now match me.” UrGoh sways, slowly – always so slowly! – his head bobbing dreamily under the influence of the urdrupe berries._

_"Stupid idea,” skekGra says, half-heartedly trying to imitate urGoh's movements._

_"We agreed to take turns,” urGoh insists. “Screaming at each other didn't work. Now, we dance. If we can anticipate each other's movements, it means we are closer to being one again.”_

_SkekGra suppresses a snort and tries harder. Lacking the counterbalancing weight of a heavy tail, and dizzied by the berries the two have eaten, he soon stumbles and falls to the ground._

_In perfect synchrony, urGoh collapses onto him, laughing. “It worked! We are one!”_

_"Shut up, old fool,” skekGra grumbles, pushing him off and rolling onto his back. “Get off your tail, it's hurting me.” UrGoh complies, still laughing. SkekGra smooths a bony hand along the scraggly grass._

_"What do you feel?” urGoh asks._

_SkekGra tries to calm the rush of thoughts and colors in his head. What does he feel? He can feel the ground beneath him, the air above him. He can feel the blood rushing through his body and the breath whistling through his lungs. Far away, at the edges of his dizzy perception, he can feel the warm life of urGoh, so familiar and yet so strange, so frustratingly_ separate _from him. Even further, so faint that he's not sure whether it's truth or wishful thinking, he can feel a distant song. It hums through every part of the world, but it will not hum through him; he can hear it but not feel it. It passes him by without a pause or a skipped note._

_"Not Thra,” he says at last. “Still, it will not accept us. After all these trine.”_

_"We don't belong here,” urGoh says. “This land is green and good, but it is not ours. That is why we must become one again, so that we can leave this world to its own creatures. Leave them to their own destinies.”_

*

At first, they're cautious around each other. SkekGra all but jumps out of his skin every time urGoh moves or speaks, and urGoh becomes even slower and calmer in response until it nearly drives skekGra insane. SkekGra thinks they both fear angering the other, sparking further rejection after both have lost their peoples, or worse, renewed violence between Skeksis and urRu such as hasn't been seen since the Great Division.

He finds himself so relieved to be in urGoh's presence again that he can't bear to disagree with him, even when urGoh takes an unbearable amount of time to finish a simple sentence. UrGoh winds skekGra up even as he calms him, and skekGra senses that his presence – and his quick, nervous speech, bubbling with ideas as to how they can bring the urRu and Skeksis together – have a similar effect on the Mystic.

After skekGra first arrives, they sleep on opposite ends of the cavern. After half an unum, skekGra suggests that they divide the cavern in two, half for each. At that, urGoh rises up to his full height, throws his maned head back, and bellows “NO.”

SkekGra recoils, afraid that he has so angered urGoh that the Mystic will cast him out and he will be alone. He sits miserably in silence for several minutes, staring at the floor. When urGoh's heavy head nudges up under his arm he startles, then forces himself to stillness. After another minute or two, he begins to gingerly stroke the soft mane under his hand.

“We have been apart too long as it is,” urGoh says at last. “We must not divide ourselves further.”

That night, instead of retreating to his end of the cavern when they retire, skekGra diffidently approaches urGoh's pile of blankets. The Mystic, already bedded down for the night, slowly lifts one hand to beckon him in. They curl around each other, and skekGra lets his breathing synchronize with urGoh's, imagining them as one being again, united in body and mind as well as in purpose.

*

_"I feel strange. I feel – “ skekGra breaks off, staring at his hand, which wavers, growing and shrinking, before his eyes._

_"That's the berries starting to work.” UrGoh's voice seems to come from far away. SkekGra turns his head to find him and nearly falls over backwards when he comes nose-to-beak with the Mystic. “Hello,” urGoh says._

_The cavern warps unsettlingly behind urGoh's head, making skekGra's mind reel. He grabs onto urGoh's shoulders for the feel of something solid, unchanging._

_"Okay, I ate your stinking berry,” he says. “Now what?”_

_UrGoh's mouth falls open in a grin, and skekGra thinks,_ I wonder what it would be like, to share that joy with him again?

_"Now we wait,” urGoh says after a long pause, “and see what Thra has to say to us.” He holds up a cluster of berries. “Want another one?”_

*

After the battle at Stone-in-the-Wood, after Hup has been carried off by Lore (in secret, Hup thinks, but very few things are secret to them now), Aughra comes to them. Reconstituted by Thra, suffused with its song, she is so glorious that skekGra can hardly bear to look at her. Her third eye is open, and though it seems unseeing, he is afraid to meet its gaze.

“Hard times coming now,” Aughra says. “Harder than ever before, for all Thra.”

“We...are ready,” urGoh says. “And the Gelflings are strong.”

Aughra huffs impatiently, and skekGra inwardly sympathizes. “Gelflings are strong, yes, but not yet united, not as they must be. They need help. Need someone to show them the way.”

“But how?” skekGra bursts out, realizing what she means. He gestures at the two of them. “How can we, still two, show Gelfling how to become one?”

“You are still two, yes, but you have the desire,” Aughra says. “You know what it is to wish for unity. You work together! No other Skeksis and urRu pair could manage such a thing. You must show them!” She quotes, “'What was sundered and undone, shall be whole, the two made one.' The Gelfling do not know the prophecy. You must share it with them, and soon! Even now, they begin to gather themselves together, to learn how to defeat the Skeksis. You must be there.”

“We will,” urGoh says. “We must plan.” He turns and heads toward the back of the cavern.

“I know you will,” Aughra says, and points to her third eye. “I have seen it. _All_ of it.”

SkekGra doesn't want to plan. He wants, suddenly and desperately, to know. He follows Aughra out into the light of the suns. “What else did you see?” he asks.

Aughra turns back to him. “Aughra has seen many things,” she says. “So have you. So what is it you want to know, that I might have seen?”

“Prophecy,” skekGra says. “Prophecy says that urSkeks will be united again, will be whole. We have seen many pieces of the puzzle. But there is one thing I have never seen.” He trails off there, afraid to voice his question.

“Yes?” Aughra says, impatiently.

SkekGra tries again. “SkekMal, skekLach...urVa and urSen. We are so few. So many have fallen. Great battles lie ahead. UrGoh and I...I fear...”

Aughra reaches out to him. He bends to her and she cradles his face with her hand. Her touch is warm, nearly electric; for a moment he thinks he can feel the song of Thra as he only has once before in his long, long life, thrumming through her into him. “Brave skekGra,” she says. “You were once the mightiest of your people, and now you fear them.”

“Mystics are peaceful,” he says. “Skeksis are not.” He shudders, settling his ruffled clothing back into place. “So much violence, so much fear and anger. What if prophecy is not true? What if all this,” he gestures all around them, “for nothing?”

“No great work done in the service of good is ever for nothing,” Aughra says. Her good eye closes, and her third eye rolls crazily. Her voice goes dreamy, distant. “Hard times coming, as I said. Harder even than you can imagine. Too many have died, and more to come. But Thra has shown me that we can succeed. I can see it now, as we speak. If all are together, if we are united, we can fulfill the prophecy and repair the Crystal. And before it is all over, you and urGoh, you will be re-”

She cuts off with a sudden intake of breath, and her third eye stops rolling. SkekGra, feeling a sudden surge of hope, cries out, “Restored? Rejoined?”

Aughra looks at him with her good eye full of sadness. “Revenged,” she says, gently.

*

_"Do you – do you see that, do you see it? Do you?” Nose-to-beak, eight hands joined and four eyes wide, they stood stock-still, holding one another up, caught in the power of their shared vision._

_"Yes – the Crystal – whole again! Yes! And Skeksis, urRu – we are – “_

_"Together – because of Gelfling?”_

_SkekGra can feel the vision surging through him, and it is urGoh and it is Thra and it is_ himself _and it is almost like being one, almost like the pain of hundreds of trine of separation fell away and left them tall and bright and shining again. He can feel Thra's essential_ oneness _, its harmony with itself, even though the harsh flaw of the shattered Crystal whines discordant undertones beneath the song. And for the first time he can feel Thra's song moving through him, through urGoh, binding them to each other and to Thra and to all the creatures of the world._

_"Do you feel that?” urGoh asks._

_"Yes,” skekGra says. “We can rejoin – it can be done – but Gelfling will come to us, we must help –“_

_"We will help,” urGoh says. His hands tighten on skekGra's, and skekGra squeezes back. Eyes wide open, holding one another up, they let themselves be filled with Thra's song, giving themselves up to the oneness of the world._

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Heather,
> 
> I know what you mean about this being a weird ship - it's probably my weirdest, too - but I was *all in* for these two from the minute they first came onscreen. The pining, and the angst, and the fact that they both gave up everything to be together. I knew I wanted to write them by the end of the first episode they were in, so I was so glad to get your prompt.
> 
> One of the things you said you wanted was the two of them pining through the ages, and I hope I've captured a little of the flavor of that here. The very best of Yules to you - I hope you enjoy your gift!


End file.
